The number one question I get when people find out I have a podcast is how do you even make a podcast? A lot of you want to start a podcast, but you don't know how. Let me tell you about anchor. For one, it's free and there are creation tools that allow you to record and edit your podcast right from your phone or computer. The best part is anchor distributes your podcast for you so it can be heard on Spotify, Apple podcast, Google play, and many more. You can make money from your podcast too with no minimum listenership. It's everything you need to make a podcast in one place. Check out anchor.com forward slash FM today. Hi, I'm Mikayla, a psychotherapist. I am Savannah psychotherapist and this is our podcast hippie and the realest real life conversations about life and happiness. Hello everybody and welcome back to the hippie inner realist podcast.
I have a little bit of bummer news and that is that Savannah has been so busy that she is not been able to, um, head over and participate in the podcast this week. So I am flying solo and a little bit nervous because I seem to do better conversationally when there's somebody else to kind of bounce ideas and things like that off of. But in this week's podcast we're talking about happiness and I actually feel like this is something that I can kind of kind of chat at alone because um, and just so intimately involved in this concept in my life. And I wrote a book called BU find happy and that's kind of how the podcast came to be as well as workshops and different things like that because something interesting was happening and that is that clients were coming to see me and they would never ask how do I find happiness?
Or how do I just be happy? They would say, how do I get rid of my anger? Or how do I get rid of my anxiety? Or how do I not feel sad or depressed? And it started to Dawn on me that happiness is such a big overwhelming concept. It, it seems so large that we have a hard time holding onto it. And so we can experience happiness for a brief amount of time, but you know, we don't, we don't seem to know how to manifest it at the drop of a hat, but we seem to know how to get angry instantly or to get sad instantly. Um, but happiness is a little bit harder to just kind of grab onto. And so I pulled Instagram and I asked, is happiness extrinsic or is happiness intrinsic? And what's interesting to me is I thought for sure everybody would say, Oh, it's intrinsic.
But actually people also felt that it's extra. And so I think this is the root of happiness. This is where happiness starts. It's, and I've said it before, but it's that hot coffee in the morning that you absolutely love and you know, you go to get it and the first sip burns your mouth and now you're not happy. The coffee didn't make you happy, the coffee pissed you off and you're upset. And so when we put our happiness in extrinsic things, I think that we're setting ourselves up to fail a little bit. I feel like, um, thanks that we attribute to our happiness can, can be considered things that will lead us to happiness. Like for example, if I know that hanging out with a certain someone makes me happy, well then in general I could say that would bring me more happiness to hang out with that individual.
But what if that individual doesn't show up or they bail on you and then you feel kind of heartbroken or crushed? So how do we find happiness? How do we have happiness? And it's funny because you know, I, I have to reference this movie. Um, there's this scene in the princess bride, which is a timeless classic, and I may be aging myself, but this particular scene in this movie, he, Wesley says, um, at the time he's the dread pirate Roberts. And he says to, uh, the princess, he says, um, get used to disappointment. And I think that's just such an interesting, he says, life is pain, Highness get used to disappointment. And that movie is just full of pearls in general. So if you have not seen it rented on Netflix or wherever, Amazon prime and if you have seen it, watch it again. And um, cause there's so many great life analogies in there, but that one life is pain get used to disappointment.
So good. Um, because I think that's really what it's about. It's about accepting that there is going to be things that are going to piss us off and make us angry and make us sad. There are going to be things that come into our life that don't serve us or are toxic or are just frankly disappointing. And we have to learn how to bounce back. So here's the Pearl. Are you ready? So far I've said nothing of value, but here you go. This is the Pearl. Happiness is a constant reset. And then say it again. Happiness is a constant reset. And so I think there are three components to happiness and the first one is letting go. And I'm going to give you guys a story in a minute because I feel like, um, it's such a great prime example of my own, um, personal journey.
And if you follow my newsletter at all, if you're a subscriber to my newsletter, you've already heard some of this story and you've already gotten these prompts for it from a therapeutic standpoint. The second component is gratitude. So looking within the anger or the sadness or the situation or the thing and finding something to be grateful for. And then the last piece of this, and I say silence is the last component, but really it's about finding a space of quiet peace to reset. So those are my three components to happiness. It's letting go of gratitude and silence. And when I'm working with clients, these are always the direction that I'm taking them. When they're bringing me what they describe as anger, sadness, depression, anxiety, whatever. If they came to me and said, I want to be happy all of the time, I would say, ah, then you better fire me as your therapist.
Cause I do not have this banker. I really don't. I wish I did. I wish I had this magic key to walk around all the time. Happy. I wish I could be that person who never let anything get to me, but kind of going back to dread pirate Roberts, I don't think that exists. And maybe it does for some, you know, monks living in the Himalayas or something. Um, it certainly, if you were someone listening to this podcast that never has gotten upset and has never experienced a let down or anger or sadness, please by all means, comment, comment, comment, and give us the secret cause we do want to know it. But for the sake of this podcast, I'm going to talk about the constant reset. So the story, let me take a little pause. I think we'll do a little woo here so I can get a sip of water and, um, get mentally ready to share this story with you.
And I live in a small town, so I'm going to have to figure out how to share this story without being, um, well, let me tell you this. In the past I had a blog years and years and years ago before bloggers were like bloggers. And I, I know I say this a lot, but I do honestly feel like I was doing a lot of this stuff before. This stuff was cool. I never did it well enough and so I didn't make it to the level that the rest of them did or something or I did it too soon and missed the window, which maybe I won't miss the window on the podcasting front, but, um, I probably already have. So I used to blog, I used to be a blogger and um, back then I would blog about real life experiences and you know, kind of I was just, I'm not going to stay as vomity because I really felt like there was a therapeutic component for myself.
And, um, it wasn't exactly an online journal, but it kind of was. And as a matter of fact, that is how my first book teetering on disaster came to be. It was, it really was an online journal. Um, and then I started kind of migrating towards just a human things like taking, I would take what was a Facebook post and I would elaborate on it and then it would run, it would get wings and people would be like, yeah, I totally agree. Or people would be like, no, that's so wrong. And often when I was telling these stories, my life experiences or my stories on my blog, I would really upset somebody that I knew. Um, you know, somebody who'd been involved in the story in some way. Or, um, I remember one, one time I blogged about my kind of spiritual beliefs and it really upset my mom.
Um, you know, she was, she and I kind of have different ideas on that and, and she maybe didn't realize how different our ideas were until then, and she was really upset. She was like, why would you put that on the internet? Like, you know, and, and even now with my Instagram, um, my captions, I'm a wordsmith or I'm a, I'm a elaborate reader and elaborate writer. I live in pictures in my mind and stories are how I communicate. And, um, I'm never short on a story or words. And if you know me personally, you know this, you know that if you run into me, I am never going to be the one who's like one wording you back. I'm, I'm totally gonna engage in a conversation and probably share a story. Um, and so even with my Instagram, you know, my husband sometimes will be like, I really wish you hadn't put that on the internet.
I really wish you hadn't shared that for everybody that was just for us. Or um, you know, he, he's not really one to care what other people think. Um, but I think that he's one to protect what he perceives is private. So I often um, live in this world of trying to be my authentic self, which is expressive and a storyteller and all of that. And then also trying to, you know, appease the people in my life who maybe don't want to be drug into my style. And um, it's interesting cause I was going to take a break and now I just spent three minutes ranting. But um, that's the BU piece of BU. Find happy is how do you be your authentic self and live your true intention cause you only get one life and still fit in with the relationships that you have and the rest of the people.
And honestly, I think when our happiness is threatened the most, it's because we are not aligning with our true selves or we've ticked off somebody we love and usually we've ticked off somebody. We love trying to be ourself. So I mean as simply as, you know, maybe I want to leave my underwear on the floor and the other person doesn't like that kind of a thing. That is not the case in my home. I am ridiculously anal. Um, you could walk into my house any time of the day or night and there is not even addition to sink cause I'm crazy. Um, thanks mom.
I really do appreciate it though. Um, I like having a clean space and that is also something that's in the BU find happy book. It's about how important our physical spaces to our mental health and our happiness. If our space is cluttered, our mind is cluttered, they are directly related. So, um, but yeah, so to take a little break for a second and figure out how to tell this story, that's the direction I'm going. And then we'll circle back on the three components, the constant reset and of course the BU part of the you find happy.
So my husband agreed after years and years and years of begging him, um, to put a water feature in the yard that, um, he said, you know, if you make the yard the way you want it and I don't have to get involved in it, meaning like I would do it, that he would go in financially on this water feature that I really wanted. And so I moved into this home about 10 years ago and it's hard to believe that it's been that long. Um, prior to that, I moved constantly. My mom used to joke that she had to put my, uh, if she, if she wrote a card, she had to put the address in pencil as I would move before she could mail it. Um, so it's interesting how I've gravitated towards this space and stayed here and um, and it, it really has taken me 10 years to get it the way that I want my space to be.
It's an older home in the mountains. And, um, so over 10 years I literally have moved every rock in our yard. I built an English rock garden, um, wheelbarrows, all of the pea gravel by myself. I mean my husband's help, but I mean we didn't hire this stuff out. Um, we built the deck that we have, which ironically is half the square footage of our home, um, with the help of friends and um, and every little piece of this whole yard, everything about it, the chicken coop, the chicken fencing, the garden, all of it. Um, the concrete we did with my dad. Matter of fact, one day we were doing a concrete pad and we got everything all done. We were slaving in the sun and my husband went to go return the, the cement mixer that was on like a tow behind. And I turned around and my son, who was like three or four at the time, had taken his monster truck and drove it through.
And he did like spun Brody's in the middle of the concrete pad and my husband had left and I was all by myself and I was like, Oh my gosh. And I had to um, go out there with the trial and like try to save this pad that we'd spent all these hours getting flat. So, um, emotional connection to my home, my yard, my space is huge. Um, I spend, this is my safe place, this is my reset place. It's um, you know, it's my home and if I'm, if I'm the lion, this is my dead. And so I spent, um, so many backbreaking hours and, and, um, loving hours, you know, invested in this space and we decided a couple years ago to hire someone to do our fence, which hands down best decision we've ever made. Because if you look at my chicken coop fence, it is literally falling out of the ground cause I am on a steep, steep cliff.
And so it's really hard to fence a property like this. Um, and we hired the fencer and, um, as it would turn out, this is rural, right? So our property backs up to some body else's properties, 20 acres, and on all the other sides there's minimum five acres. So, you know, it's, it's like, yeah, we kind of think the fence goes here. And in fairness, when the fence was complete, I'm like, Ooh, it is definitely more on his property than our property, at least where we think the property goes. But if you go and you look at the County, like has the line right through the roof, so nobody really knew. Um, but we, we kinda knew it wasn't exactly where it probably should be based upon where kind of an older fence had been years prior. And so of course he came down and he was like, Hey, your fence is on my land, blah, blah, blah.
And we're like, really? Sorry. You know, let's go ahead and get it moved. And he's like, Oh, I want to know exactly where my land is and I'm gonna hire a surveyor and blah, blah, blah. And we're like, okay, you don't need to go F, you know, do that expense. We will happily move this fence for you. And, um, he didn't wanna take that route. So we're like, alright, well we'll leave the fence where it is and then when we know where the property line is, we'll move it. So fast forward to about a year ago, we, so this was like two and a half, two and a half years ago, two years ago. Well, about a year ago, a little less, almost. No, it was exactly a year cause it was February. Um, actually it snowed after it was done. We found a wa a guy who would build a water feature that I'd wanted and I got a couple quotes.
And this guy, you know, his work was just absolutely beautiful. And so he came out and I said, Hey, you know, the neighbor wants the fence moved and this is where the old fence was. And nobody knows exactly where the property line is. But let's err on the side of caution and put the water feature way over here. And he did. And he built this beautiful water feature. And for a year, um, I have completely enjoyed this space. I put a mindfulness bench. I've spent hours sitting on this bench looking at the water, reflecting on the water, watching the chickens, watching the docks, watching the dog, watching my son play in the yard. And um, at night in the summer I've laid on the bench and just stargaze I'm huge, huge hippie into astrology and all things universe. And, um, I should talk about that on another podcast.
Cause I absolutely love astrology. Absolutely love just the stars. All of it. Matter of fact, when I'm camping, I have this really cool map that glows in the dark and it shows you all of the different constellations and um, you know, it tells you a little bit about them. So this space for me is just so precious. And so, you know, I earned it. I really feel like I earned this space 10 years of putting so much energy and love into this yard. And, um, and this wasn't, this water feature wasn't something that we could have tackled, you know, something that we had to hire out. So we saved and we did it and it's beautiful. Um, and so the other day, the, um, about maybe three weeks ago, two weeks ago, the, um, the boundary markers finally got completed and they were pretty much exactly where we thought the fence went.
So no surprise there. Um, and fortunately the guy who put in the fence originally had known about this. My, my husband happens to coach his son in baseball. And, um, so he's, you know, through the course of the two years we've stayed in contact and he kind of knew that this, this fence line was going to have to move. And he came out to the property markers, went in on a Thursday. He came out on a Monday and moved the fence by Thursday. So literally within days we taken care of this for the neighbor and I was, we had all these rains and all this snow and I was out there, um, just kind of cleaning out this just mud, um, where we live as clay. It's like red clay. And they had the fencers in the process of moving the posts had dug just tons of big muddy holes.
And because of the rain and the Hill that we live on, the slope, all of this red mud clay just came rushing down the Hill. And my water feature is just destroyed. I mean, it's filled with silt and mud and the has some decomposed granite around it and water plants and things like that. And other plants. Like I had a, um, uh, uh, creeping blue, uh, watch McCullough. I'm forgetting the name of it. And uh, uh, our Buddhist Marina plant, I don't know if you're into gardening at all, you'll know some of these, but just so many different things around this water feature and they've all just been completely hacked, dead, destroyed. Like yuck. It's just carnage out there. I don't know how else to describe it with the snow and the rain, it's just been carnage. And um, so I'm out there and I'm cleaning everything up and the storm had knocked over this gazing ball.
So glass like real sturdy, I'm talking sturdy glass gazing ball with all of these little like mosaic tile type things on it. And I like an idiot. I always wear gloves in the yard always. I mean especially if I'm like digging in the mud. I don't know if I were to really trip out and get all weird and hippy, I wouldn't say I was probably trying to root and ground myself or something cause they, and I grabbed this gazing ball and I'm, and it's dark and cloudy and freaking cold and I'm so angry. I am so, so angry and I put this gazing ball down on this stand and I shove it like I'm trying to shove it into the ground so that the, the pole, the posts that it sits on were like dig into the ground and then put the gazing ball on top.
And I'm, I'm palming the gazing ball and I'm pushing down. And literally I wasn't even pushing that hard. This thing shattered into a billion pieces. My energy was so dark, like so yucky, so toxic, just vile blood coming out. And I look up and the neighbor is standing on the other side of the fence right behind and I'm covered in mud and he puts his hands on his hips and he says, what you going to do about your little pond? And literally, I am not kidding guys. The water feature, the plastic top that the waterfall starts in is one and a half inches on his property. He owns 20 acres of land. His home, if I were to walk to his house, his front door is a mile away. So you can imagine, Oh God, there was like, I literally was so thing mad, so mad.
I've been nothing but respectful and kind. And you know, small town, he's been running around for two years telling people the fence goes through his property line, goes through our house and he's gonna own our house, like all these people at the school and whatever. And I've not said a damn thing. And I looked up at him and all I could hear was what my husband had said to me days before, quit letting him steal your happiness. And he was so right. He stood there, he wanted a fight so bad. And I looked at him and I said, you know, I've never cared about where this fence was going to go. And I said, as a matter of fact, I think this new fence looks so much better because now it goes all the way to the garage and it's so gorgeous. And I'm so grateful that he was able to fence her, was able to come out and get it done so quickly.
And you know, the best part, I bought these climbing roses that you can only plant in the winter and I am going to plant them and they're going to climb all over this fence and it's so much better. It's going to be, it's going to make this beautiful little privacy screen by my water feature. And I said, and as for that, the waterfall, the guy already knows and he's going to come out. And he's going to move it, and he did not know what to do. He was expecting me to just fight him back over that one inch and I didn't, I didn't, I didn't give it to him. I didn't engage. And so without having a fight, he left and all of a sudden I looked down and my hand is literally gushing blood. I was so angry. My hands are so cold from the mud that I did not even know.
I had literally punctured six wounds in my hand when I had pushed on the gazing ball and all of a sudden I'm looking at this blood just pouring out through the mud and my hands and the sun comes out and it's almost blinding. You know the sun I'm talking about when it's like a super dark gray cloudy day. It's like how the term the solar lining came to be. You look up and you literally see the silver lining, like just glaring through the clouds from the sun and then the sun went away and I was like, this is, this is it. This is it. It's a constant reset. Happiness is a constant reset. There is always going to be something or someone who is trying to rip it from you, who is trying to steal it from you, who wants to take your happiness, who wants to feel your happiness for a moment.
Um, and it's, it's not about living a life that's always happy. It's about living a life that is full of gratitude and the ability to let go and peace. So the three components, letting go gratitude and silence or peace. That's it. That's the secret in my mind is not trying to live constantly happy in like a Disney movie or something. It's, it's about taking all of those things that come up, all of those micro moments and maybe not so micro moments and finding the happiness in them. And for me with the water feature, you know, honestly I just saw this part of him that seems so dark and so miserable and it made me think like, I don't have to walk in his shoes. I don't know what his, what his issue is that is making him so grumpy. But I know that I'm grateful that I have this space and that I, I have a greater understanding of not holding onto this kind of stuff.
And sometimes I'll be honest, I suck at it. Sometimes I get so angry and I get so mad. I mean, I freaking shattered a gazing ball, heaven sakes. So it's not like I, I don't have the capacity to be a bitch or to be angry or to get mad or to lose my cool cause I definitely do. But I think what I've been working on is how to dig a little deeper and let go a little quicker and find some gratitude and get to peace that constant reset a little bit quicker. The other thing I think is important is speaking your truth with grace. So I think when we hold stuff in that's important for us to say, it builds up in a way that's just really yucky. And I think that kind of ties into the being you peace. I don't have all the answers for how to be your authentic self.
Um, I still struggle with that myself, but I do think that spending a little time connecting with yourself and you know, if something's triggering you or something's making you upset, thinking about, do I need this in my life? Do I want this in my life and who do I want to be? And I think that's something that kids do so well. They just live in the moment and they're not worried about trying to impress anyone. They're just being themselves. And I think that's a beautiful gift that we lose as we get older. Um, you know, wearing neon green with whatever orange or something. And it, not to say that that's not a great color combo, but you know, like they don't care. They don't, they don't think about it. They just think that shirt is really cool and they want to wear it. And we put so much weight in what others think and so much weight in what we think people want us to be and who they want us to be.
And I just don't see how we can ever truly be happy when we're working so hard to make someone else happy. I think the secret to being yourself is to making yourself happy. You first like putting on your oxygen mask first. So if you want more of this, I've been talking for about 30 minutes, which is incredibly shocking. I don't know how I did that, but if you want more of this, if you want more of this concept, this podcast, check out, be you find happy on Amazon. It is available in ebook and it's available also as an audible. Um, it's not some lengthy thesis on happiness, it's just the opposite. It is literally super quick read and it's got a link to a Pinterest board with some actionable items because I find that, you know, when, when clients come see me, they want something quick. They want tools, they want something they can actually do and chew on and not something that's going to take them six months to read and really think about. So check out, be you. Find happy on Amazon. Quick read. I think it's $3 and 99 cents. And, um, and let me know what you think of this podcast and uh, and go easy cause I'm by myself.
Oh, what else? What else? What else? What else? Hmm. I think that's it. Life is pain Highness.
Thanks for listening. I really appreciate all of you.